70:45 minutes (16.19 MB)We invite you to join us as we reflect on Writing Project Summer Institutes and other professional development opportunities we have or will be facilitating for our colleagues this summer.

Please take a moment, go register and leave your comments over at our Teachers Teaching Teachers room on http://friendfeed.com/rooms/ttt and take a look at some of the sites we've been collecting there for this Wednesday's live webcast.

Hear what Bud Hunt (Colorado), Mary Meyer (Prairie Lands Writing Project), and Bonnie Kaplan (Hudson ValleyWriting Project) have been up to:

• Blogging with Summer Institute 2008
  A blog for integrating technology into the Hudson Valley Writing Project's Summer Institute. Bonnie Kaplan, technology liaison will be with us on TTT, Wednesday night, June 18.
• Writing With Technology
  Mary Meyer will be with us on Wednesday to reflect on this work.
• CyberCamp 08
  Bud Hunt's work in his district over the past couple of weeks. Bud will be with us (an maybe a participant or two).

What are you doing to bring 21st century literacies to your Writing Project or in your district or school this summer?

Also listen to Julie Conason and Paul Allison on this podcast as they talk about the 3-week institute they are planning for the New York City Writing Project.'

Lee Baber checks in on this podcast as well. Stay strong Lee!

Photo: Uploaded to flickr on August 16, 2007 by Wesley Fryer

Chat Log

69:20 minutes (15.88 MB)

For this webcast, we invited Bill Fitzgerald, Dave Cormier and Gail Desler to talk about social networking and what platforms make sense right now. Of course behind all of this talk about Drupal and Edublogs were questions that we are asking about about how we in the, ah... Teachers Teaching Teachers, Youth Voices, Personal Learning Space, Youth Twitter ... group of teachers might want to continue working together ... and how the software decisions we need to make this Spring can support our hopes and plans.

Chat Log More Comments

45:00 minutes (10.34 MB)

This podcast begins with a focus on the work of two technology teachers and two students from The Baccalaureate School for Global Education (BSGE) in Astoria, NY. Madeline Brownstone and Shantanu Saha describe their two-year technology curriculum that has students doing global, multimedia projects.

Madeline and Shantanu have been working with schools here in the US through the New York City Writing Project and World Bridges/EdTechTalk. And their students have been participating in a project with a school in the Netherlands with iEarn.

More recently their students have also begun working with teachers and students involved with the Horizon Project, which was founded by Vikki Davis and Julie Lindsay. Listen to hear how these teachers and students integrate these national and international projects with the curricular expectations of a technology concentration that leads to an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma.

That might be enough, but Madeline and Shantanu and their students also found wonderful ways to relate their work to the collaborative study of rural culture that is being planned by Lee Baber in Virginia and Woody Woodgate in Alaska. Woody tells his students that they are natives of Alaska and the digital worlds.

In this podcast we explore all of these ways of connecting urban, rural, global, and digital youths!

45:15 minutes (10.37 MB)

It's happening in small, geographically dispersed schools in rural Alaska. Three people are responsible for doing it for over a million public school students in New York City. An independent school in Milwaukee uses the same software that is being used in NYC to do it. In Colorado, an outspoken opponent of it was recently hired for a district level job, and now he is on a small committee that gives the thumbs up or down. In North Dakota, a secret password is emailed each week to a group of thirty teachers who can then undo it in their schools, when needed. In rural Virginia, a teacher carefully measures her arguments for the educational benefit against the possible risks each time she requests for it to be undone. Because so many schools do it in so many different ways, the developers of VoiceThread have to work overtime to keep their Web 2.0 tool available in public schools.

In September, Wesley Fryer "observed from China that the level of content filtering / censorship enforced by the central, totalitarian government was actually LESS severe than the content filtering enforced in many U.S. public schools" (Content filtering in Communist China versus an Oklahoma school » Moving at the Speed of Creativity).

Really? Do the descriptions in the first paragraph accurately represent the tyranny of filtering in U.S. schools today? Or do teachers have more power than we often exercise? It's become too easy for educators to represent filtering as if it's something that oppresses us. What if we find that the enemy is us?

From the discussion captured on this podcast, we can sketch a much more complicated picture of how filtering really seems to work in U.S. schools. See what we mean by clicking Read more, below.

 

72:10 minutes (16.53 MB)

Recently, Lee Baber and Elderbob Brannan facilitated a 6-week session for the Electronic Village Online. I Got Rhythm: Music in the Classroom.

One of the prizes they found during their class was Joseph M. Pisano, a music professor whose enthusasiam and knowledge bubbles out in this podcast!

Listen to Dr. Pisano, then pass this one on to the music educator in your school. Also check out his blog: MusTech.net

That's not all! Hook your favorite music educator up with Dr. Pisano's campaign, Me Blogger. His goal is to inspire 100 Music Education Bloggers (ME Too!) before 2009. He would like to invite any music educator to become a ME Blogger today. "Join Our “Global Conversation” about music, education, and technology!"

 

Chat Log

(Click Read more to see more about Lee Baber and Elderbob Brannan)

37:40 minutes (8.61 MB)

Listen to this podcast of 8th grade students from Maryland and Virginia talking about Darfur.

Then go to Many Voices for Darfur with you students and have them add their thoughts.

Thursday and Friday, March 6 and 7, 2008

Many Voices for Darfur

 

39:00 minutes (8.95 MB)

This is a jam-packed thirty-nine minutes, where we explore the power of tagging, teachers using tumblogs, mathcasts, VoiceThreads in health, speech, history, math, music, technology, and EFL classes. Join Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Susan Ettenheim, and VoiceThread's Ben Papell (Yes, he's a "regular" by now), as they welcome these fresh voices, fresh at least to us at Teachers Teaching Teachers:

• Carla Raguseo, an EFL teacher and Computer Lab coordinator at A.R.I.C.A.N.A., a Binational Center in Rosario, Argentina
• Carla Arena, a Brazilian EFL teacher, teacher trainer and site content manager at A Binational Center in Brasilia, but she's on a leave right now.
• Jeremy Brown, a Special Education Teacher at the Medow Hall Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland
• Judi Epcke, a teacher and Technology Integration Specialist in Northbrook, Illinois
• Tim Fahlberg, founder of Mathcasts, after 11 years as a math teacher.

40:00 minutes (9.19 MB)Listen to Scott Floyd, Tech Liaison for the Texas Bluebonnet Writing Project, and Ellen Petry Leanse explain how and why they collaborated on a project that resulted in this VoiceThread, as well as other media versions of the same story. Scott writes on his blog:

Ellen Petry Leanse has a powerful story to tell of her escape from the political unrest in Kenya during the presidential elections over the 2007 Christmas holidays. She and her 12 year old son were there volunteering in an orphanage as well as other humanitarian work. I first encountered her story January 15th on Guy Kawasaki’s blog as a guest post. Her writing moved me. Something inside of me kept saying to contact her and help her share what she and her son went through. As Google would have it, her email came up in the first try, and by 8:11 AM I sent off a personal plea to her to share her narrative through digital storytelling.

A Piece of My Mind - my ideas, thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned in education The founders of VoiceThread, Ben Papell and Steve Muth, also join us in this discussion of the lessons that can be learned from this one example of digital storytelling.

Chat Log

46:56 minutes (10.8 MB)

Ben Papell and Steve Muth are fed up with the number of school districts across the US that are bocking VoiceThread. Even though VoiceThread was one of the most popular Web-tools with educators in 2007, it has also been unavailable to many teachers because of district or school filters that block all free websites or sites that allow for user contributions or that allow students to surf to unapproved content... or for whatever reasons. All Ben and Steve know is that they've been getting a steady stream of emails that say something like: "I love, love, love VoiceThread! I use it at home, but I can't use it in my school. It's blocked! Is there any way you can help?"

Ben and Steve are not the first developers of tools like VoiceThread to run into problems like this. They may be the first to come up with a solution that not only solves the blocking problem, but potentially makes their product even more attractive because it will give students of all ages free (to them), unlimited access to their own VoiceThread accounts that teachers can manage without using email addresses. Here are some of the details that Ben and Steve provided:

The Ed.VoiceThread network is a worldwide community where safety is built upon a foundation of accountability. All users are known users, responsible for their content and behavior. Access is restricted to K-12 educators, students and administrators, and all content is created exclusively by registered members of the community. Web services offering free accounts are blocked in many school districts because of child online protection policies, and are not eligible for federal eRate monies. For this reason, there are no free Ed.VoiceThread accounts and student email addresses are not required. Educators must pay a one time $10 verification fee to become a member of the community, with no recurring costs.

Schools will also be able to pay a monthly fee (about $100), which will make it possible for all teachers in the building to use VoiceThread with their students.

Learn more about this innovative plan on this webcast. Ben Papell and Steve Muth joined us once again to explain changes they are making to address access problems in US schools.

Ed.VoiceThread goes live on Thursday, January 17. Get the inside story on this podcast.

Chat Log

69:25 minutes (15.91 MB)

We were joined by many old and new voices as we brought in the new year with music and stories of things that changed our teaching last year.

Chat Log

45:00 minutes (10.31 MB) TTT83 tagged map by user - Tagzania

43:00 minutes (9.83 MB)The week before Thanksgiving, many National Writing Project (NWP) teachers participated in the NWP's Annual Meeting. Several presenters at the 2007 Annual Meeting joined us for a live webcast on Wednesday, November 28th. This is an edited podcast of that conversation with these teachers:

• Cynthia Calvert, Alcorn Writing Project
• Jason Shiroff, Denver Writing Project
• Lynne Culp, UCLA Writing Project
• Kevin Hodgson, Western Massachusetts Writing Project
• Peter Kittle, Northern California Writing Project (invited)
• Christina Cantrill, NWP Program Associate in Technology

We asked pairs of teachers who presented at the NWP Annual meeting to continue their dialogue on this webcast. We focused on their collaboration before, during, and perhaps after their face-to-face presentation. Find out what their conversations and questions are now.

The theme of the webcast was about how moments where teachers have the opportunity to gather and share practices, such as the NWP's Annual Meeting, are important points along the continuum of on-going conversations and sometimes even collaborations which begin long before the "events" and which often last long after.

We asked our guests to tell us what they learned from planning and presenting together -- both from each other as well as the extended network -- for their Writing Project sites as well as their classrooms.

Chat Log

42:45 minutes (9.8 MB)

Find out what happens when you bring together seven teachers and a student to talk about perennial questions that come up when we use blogs in the classroom.

• a 6th-12th grade "New Journalism" teacher from the Bronx (with laryngitis) (Paul Allison)
• a half-time computer teacher/half-time technology coach from a town west of Chicago, "right about where the corn begins" (Scott Meech)
• a high school art/technology teacher and librarian from New York City (Susan Ettenheim)
• an 8th grade computer technology teacher and Webhead from Virginia (Lee Baber)
• a math/science/employability skills/hunting safety teacher from Alaska (Woody Woodgate)
• a ninth grader from a small town in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia (Victoria)
• an eighth grade science teacher from northern New Hampshire (Rick Biche)
• a middle-school technology integrator from an independent K12 school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Matt Montagne)

 

 

Image: "Stalking a Caribou" by Travis S. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baggis/1735135201/) License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0

43:45 minutes (10.03 MB)

This is the first of two shows in November in which we are going to sandwich the National Writing Project's Annual Meeting with two special Teachers Teaching Teachers webcasts/podcasts, one before and one after the Annual Meeting: Nov. 15–17,

For this show we invited Writing Project Technology Liaisons who are coming to present in New York City to join us to give us a taste of what will be happening at this vital conference.

Listen to learn what it is that brings us together each year. Learn more about how Writing Project teachers are using digital storytelling (or digital composing) in their classrooms, in summer youth camps, and with other teachers in their local Writing Projects.

Joining Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim, Lee Baber, and Woody Woodgate on this week's special Teachers Teaching Teachers were

• John Bishop, Red Clay Writing Project
• Clifford Lee, Bay Area Writing Project
• Bonnie Kaplan, Hudson Valley Writing Project
• Valorie Stokes, Prairie Lands Writing Project
• Paul Oh, National Writing Project

Learn more about the NWP's Annual meeting and these teachers at the Google Notebook that we set up for this webcast.

74:15 minutes (17.05 MB)

We were joined this week by Joyce Valenza and the co-founders of of Voice Thread, Ben Papell and Steve Muth (and many wonderful teachers in the chat room). In the spirit of producing content that is open to co-creation...

...we invite you add an interesting Voice Thread to this post. Either link to or embed a Voice Thread that would help show how teachers are using this tool in their classrooms or with their colleagues.

Click Add new comment, and show us a Voice Thread that you think is cool!

Thanks.

 

Chat Log

60:55 minutes (13.94 MB)

Join our virtual staff room as we check in with a couple of 9th graders from Virginia--Victoria and Zack--along with teachers from these schools:

• East Bronx Academy for the Future, New York City - Paul Allison
• J. Frank Hilliard Middle School, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia - Lee Baber
• High School at UCLA, California - Lynne Culp
• Westwood Schools, Camilla, Georgia - Vicki Davis
• Eleanor Roosevelt High School, New York City - Susan Ettenheim
• Florin High School, Sacramento, California - Bob LeVin
• Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City, Utah - Chris Sloan

 

44:50 minutes (10.29 MB)This is our audio presentation for the K12 Online Conference. To join us live on Wed., Oct 24, 9:00 pm EST, click on the Chat Room link and the Listen link. Click Read More to find notes, links to more audio and a video.

64:05 minutes (14.65 MB)Early in this podcast we were joined by Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach to share with us some of the big ideas and vision behind the K-12 Online Conference 2007:

Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member teaching graduate and undergraduate preservice teachers at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership. In addition, Sheryl is co-leading a statewide 21st Century Skills initiative in the state of Alabama, funded by a major grant from the Microsoft Partners in Learning program. Sheryl blogs at (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/).

K12 Online Conference 2007 | About

In the second half of we get into the nitty-gritty of joining the Personal Learning Space (and Youth Voices)with teachers from four different corners of the United States: Lynne Culp from Los Angeles, Kevin Sandridge from Florida, Donna Bragg from Pennsylvania, and Woody Woodgate from Alaska. Paul Allison, Lee Baber, and Susan Ettenheim had a few ideas as well.

68:30 minutes (15.67 MB)Listen in as the Teachers Teaching Teachers crew continues the work of publishing our students' work in ways that invite other young people to respond.

• Paul Allison, East Bronx Academy for the Future, NYC
• Lee Baber, F. Hillyard Middle School, Broadway, Virginia
• Susan Ettenheim, Eleanor Roosevelt HS, NY, New York
• Bill Oneal, Trenton Central High School, West, Trenton, New Jersey
• Kevin Sandridge, Boone Middle School, Haines City, Florida
• Woody Woodgate, Marshall School, Marshall, Alaska

Here are a couple examples of our students' work: Cultural Identity in Alaska, Sequencing in Florida

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and